A charming portrait of one man’s dreams and schemes, by “the greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century” (The Guardian).

In this enchanting book of linked stories, Italo Calvino charts the disastrous schemes of an Italian peasant, an unskilled worker in a drab northern industrial city in the 1950s and ’60s, struggling to reconcile his old country habits with his current urban life.

Marcovaldo has a practiced eye for spotting natural beauty and an unquenchable longing for the unspoiled rural world of his imagination. Much to the continuing puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams and gives rein to his fantasies, whether it’s sleeping in the great outdoors on a park bench, following a stray cat, or trying to catch wasps. Unfortunately, the results are never quite what he anticipates.

Spanning from the 1950s to the 1960s, the twenty stories in Marcovaldo are alternately comic and melancholy, farce and fantasy. Throughout, Calvino’s unassuming masterpiece “conveys the sensuous, tangible qualities of life” (The New York Times).

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Editorial Reviews

Review

In their first English translation and US publication: 20 short sketches written in the early 1950s and mid-1960s, all featuring the hapless aspirations of Marcovaldo, a father, husband, and unskilled laborer in a northern Italian city. With sly wit and utter economy, Calvino satirizes the drabness of the impoverished 1950s, the hollowness of the "booming" 1960s - yet never settles for easy targets or sentimentality, much preferring the ambivalence of whimsy. Thus, Marcovaldo may be forever yearning for the simpler, pastoral pleasures - and Calvino sympathizes - but his dreamy quests almost always have an under-cutting, wry outcome. With "an eye ill-suited to city life," for instance, Marcovaldo is overjoyed to spy mushrooms sprouting on a city street ("something could still be expected of life, beyond the hourly wage. . . with inflation index"); but this bucolic miracle leads only to a stomach-pump at the local hospital. Likewise, Marcovaldo has little luck with schemes to enjoy the night air, to feast on roast woodcock, to adopt a rabbit, to get his fish direct from the river. Nor, on the other hand, do his attempts at entrepreneurship - offering wasp-sting treatments (for arthritis), collecting free detergent samples, turning ugly neighborhood billboards to economic advantage - work out much better. And sometimes the clash between the realities of Marcovaldo's life and the consumer-society around him result in surreal vignettes: a visit, with empty pockets, to a super-supermarket, filling up cart after cart with unbuyable items; a disoriented ramble through the dark city, looking for the right tram. . . but winding up on an India-bound airplane. Rich with implications about the social milieu, yet far more insistent on fable-like charm than any message: a gentle, small early-Calvino treat, shrewdly translated and agreeably packaged. (Kirkus Reviews )

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This was an incredibly nice break after working my way through The Idiot (Everyman's Library). (about which I have still been unable to write) Calvino, as always, touches the innermost feelings that make all of us who we are. While we do follow the main character throughout the seasons and the years, this is still a collection of slice-of-life stories that really do not rely on the specific characters at all. I thought, briefly, that I would be able to follow the growth of Marcovaldo's eldest, Michelino, as he grew up throughout the stories, but that really wasn't something for which this book was striving. It just wants to put us in the center of an elegantly and thoroughly described Italy.

It was nearly fantasy... I felt like we followed Calvino (and ourselves) through the troubled life of adulthead beset by bills, sickness, and the search for food with the uninhibited joy of a child. Marcovaldo's family - even Marcovaldo himself - were simply props the author used to describe the world around him as it was and as he wished to see it. No permanent ills ever befall the family; in fact nothing solid really changes from story to story. We simply are gifted with the ability to see the city through someone else's eyes.

This was an escapist book. A delightful diversion that read incredibly quickly and really didn't require too much of me as a Reader. Everything was simply laid bare. It was easy, at times, to identify with Marcovaldo as an adult, ("Oh, if I could wake just once at the twitter of birds and not at the sound of the alarm and the crying of little Paolino and the yelling of my wife, Domitilla!") but this really felt more like an exercise in getting back in touch with the wonderment, joy, and excitement the world can bring to a child whose experiences do not yet encompass the normality and boredom of every day life. Aside from the story of the rabbit, for whom I wept silently, these stories just related the beauty of being alive, even in the harshest of times. I really couldn't put this down, not because there was any underlying plot pushing me forward but because I wanted to continue living life through the eyes of a child for just a little while longer. I wish it hadn't ended, but when it did, I was smiling.

Once more, Italo Calvino shows why he is the greatest fabulist of our times. The focal point of this piece is the character Macrovaldo, the unfortunate Everyman of these stories who although a city dweller extraordinaire constantly finds the bucolic in the city. Yet owing to the fascinating wit of the author, Macrovaldo is always unpleasantly surprised. One doesn't know who to feel more sorry for, the family of Macrovaldo or the man himself.

Structure around the seasons of the year in a five year cycle, this Pythagorean world is perfect for Calvino to test his theory of time and place while at the same time providing an oblique commentary on politics, cultural mores etc. in a pattern so familiar to those familiar with his work.

Whether he is breeding rabbits, hunting for mushrooms, fishing, the troubles of Macrovaldo always entertain and usually surprise the reader. The inevitable tension between the urban world and the Arcadian aspirations of Macrovaldo are typically Calvino's. It is curious to note how Calvino has surreptitiously influenced much of the more serious Italian film makers.

A delightful collection of short stories about the eponymous Marcovaldo, a struggling blue collar worker in 20th century Italy. He's a kind of Everyman, struggling to get by in a world not made for dreamers. Easy to read in a few minutes here and there or fir a prolonged period. Definitely a difference between those that Calvino wrote pre & post WWII. (Post-WWII are much darker with touches of the grotesque or surreal.) Book arrived promptly from used book seller.

I have two (kind of three) other works by Italo Calvino sitting on my shelf but chose to start with this one, because it's the shortest one and I read it as a transition piece between two denser books. My experience of this book is probably marred by that mindset.

This is definitely something I'll reread in the future, and I can see myself upping the stars I've given it after a reread.

First off, Calvino's prose is beautiful. It's whimsical and then suddenly grounded, and always conjures a rich world and mood, with hints of magical realism.

There's no overarching storyline. You cycle through the seasons with Marcovaldo, with each season having its own tale. Marcovaldo is an impoverished menial laborer whom you track through his various escapades to "lessen his burden and that of those around him" (as the back of the book cover says). All of these ultimately fail in simultaneously hilarious and saddening ways. Calvino explores consequences of industrialism, nuances to family relationships (Marcovaldo's wife and children are featured in most of the stories), the helplessness of the individual (but without the depressing air such ponderings often bear), and the individual's perpetual attempt to find meaning and beauty.

My favorite is the season of the poisonous rabbit (one not-so-fair autumn). Marcovaldo and the rabbit are both characters who are acutely very universally human. The juxtaposition of dissapointment/despair and humor/hope here, while also quite characteristic of the other stories in the book, had the greatest impact on me.

Some of Calvino's more adventurous and thoughty books are, I'm sure, superior to the humble Marcovaldo. But the Calvino I love best is when he's writing straightforward stories - such as these or the ones he collected in Italian Folktales. I also love everything else I've read by Calvino - which is most of everything available in English - but Marcovaldo remains among my favorites. A simple and endearing series of tales about a hapless but lovable buffoon that really stay with me.

You have to enjoy ironic humor to take pleasure in the many missteps of Marcovaldo, the dreaming proletariat protagonist. His schemes never end well. Features Calvino's trademark eloquence, but without the usual joy.